Chapter 9 Lecture 2 Tang Dynasty-2

2. The examination system of the Tang Dynasty In the last meeting we talked about the electoral system in the Han Dynasty. By the Tang Dynasty, this system had actually been completely replaced by the examination system.When it comes to the original meaning of the word "examination", "examination" refers to performance appraisal, and "examination" refers to trial.As far back as the late Warring States period, a large number of utopianists in ancient China were advocating the selection of talents and abilities, and advocating examinations and civil service. Their intention was to stipulate an objective standard for the government to employ personnel.The electoral system of the Han Dynasty was thus advocated.Elections in the Tang Dynasty were actually evolved from the electoral system in the Han Dynasty, which we now call the examination system.

In the Han Dynasty, after the elections in the township elections, the central government conducted an examination.The first is the countermeasure, and the countermeasure is just to ask for opinions.It was not until the late Eastern Han Dynasty, when Zuo Xiong was the Minister, that there was no official examination.At that time, the examination was only one of the programs in the electoral system.By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was in chaos, Emperor Xian of the Han fled, the central government lost contact, all systems were in chaos, and the system of township elections and local elections could not be implemented.As a result, there was no standard for the imperial court to employ personnel, especially when warriors abused personnel in the ranks and did not follow the system.Cao Cao took Chen Qun as his minister, and was in charge of the personnel affairs of the Ministry of Officials. Chen Qun initiated the nine-rank Zhongzheng system.In general, those who served in the central government at that time, with high morals and reputations, were elected by each state and county as Da Zhongzheng.Small Zhongzheng is produced from the big Zhongzheng down.Then the central government distributes a talent survey form. In this form, talents are divided into nine grades, such as upper, upper, middle, lower, middle, upper, middle, middle, and lower, and lower, upper, middle, lower, and lower.Let each place be upright, big or small, and let each know what they know, and record the exiles in the central government in each place.Regardless of whether the person has been an official or has never been an official, he can enter the registration form.The table contains details of his year and registration, his grade, and his comments.Therefore, the person who presides over this work is called Jiupin Zhongzheng.These forms are submitted to the Ministry of Officials after being approved by Xiao Zhongzheng with the assistance of Da Zhongzheng, and the Ministry of Officials will consider the appointment and dismiss them respectively according to the grades and comments of such forms.In this way, there is an objective standard for the appointment and promotion of officials.However, this standard is still based on the public opinion and public opinions in various places, and still retains the legacy of the Han Dynasty's township elections and elections.The reason is that it is different from the modern Western democratic electoral system, and it is still a group of people and a person who follows the virtuous.Chinese traditional concept, it is always said that sages can represent public opinion and public opinion.This is a theory.As for the virtuous but not virtuous, and the upright but not upright, it is another fact.At least when Cao Wei first implemented this system, it was much better than the previous random use of private individuals.Once the system was established, the administration of officials was clarified, and the Cao family won the world, this system also had something to do with it.

But after all, this system is only a temporary remedy.Just like a certain medicine to cure a certain disease, it is not suitable to take it again when the disease is cured.Otherwise, the medicine is used to cure the disease and also to cause the disease.From the unification of the world in the Jin Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Chen Qun's system was continued to be adopted and could not be updated, so problems emerged.First of all, everyone wanted to be selected for the Dazhong Genuine Questions, so they gathered in the center of Dazhongzheng's location.It is not a good thing that the national talents are concentrated in the central government.First of all, there is no local talent. Not only does local administration have to reduce efficiency, but local customs and culture are also difficult to improve.When the local government has collapsed, how can the central government survive alone.So centralization is not a good thing, and centralization is not a good thing either.This is the first point.Furthermore, Zhongzheng comments, even if you are an official or not, you need to comment on the whole body, and the officials are promoted and dismissed based on this.This is to confuse civil service examinations with elections.As a result, officials also rushed to compete with each other to gain social reputation, but they did not care about their official positions and actual work, and their superiors could do nothing about him.When Chen Qun was in office, why did Dazhong Zhengding have a part-time job as a central official?Therefore, at that time, the local government had lost contact with the central government, so only the central government official served concurrently as Da Zhongzheng, so that he could select exiles from his hometown who were in the central government for appointment by the central government.But why is it necessary to register and criticize officials and officials in the Zhongzheng Book?This is because by doing so, a group of incompetent people who had been abused at that time could be clarified and removed.These are the painstaking efforts of Chen Qun when he created this system.Therefore, the Jiupin Zhongzheng system is not considered a bad system as long as it is a temporary relief.But later, because the relationship between time and space was different, but it was still used, a big problem finally occurred.

It can be seen from this that the political system is realistic, and each system must be aimed at the reality, and it must be able to change and adapt at all times.There is absolutely no system that remains unchanged for twenty or thirty years, let alone two or three hundred years.But no matter how it changes, the original spirit behind a system, that is, the main purpose of the system, remains unchanged.Therefore, every system can develop along its normal track.This is the natural growth of this system.The system must continue to grow, and it must grow under the realistic requirements of the real environment. The system is by no means produced from a certain theory, but from reality.However, this system produced in this reality must also have its own set of theories and spirits.Theory is the spiritual life of this system, and reality is the blood nutrition of this system, and both are indispensable.That is to say, all the systems of the Tang Dynasty were mostly evolved from the Northern and Southern Dynasties, with their historical origins and traditional spirit.Today we cut off the history and try to imitate the foreign system. We know that this system does not match the reality, but we want to subvert the reality to accommodate the system, and call it revolution.In fact, the essence of revolution should be to overthrow the system to accommodate the reality, not to overthrow the reality to accommodate the system.At this moment, on the one hand, we have denied all the theoretical basis behind the traditional system, and on the other hand, we have ignored all the real requirements in the real environment.So our theory at the moment is a theory that despises reality.And the system we want is also an unrealistic system.If one is willing to accept the lessons of past history, this trend should be vigilantly ruled out.At the time of Cao Cao, the nine-rank Zhongzheng system was adopted and it was effective for a while, but since then the system has remained unchanged, and there have been many problems. Later, people only blame the nine-rank Zhongzheng system for not being good.

Now when it comes to the change of each system, there should also be a variable limit, and we cannot change as we wish.What is valuable is to find its unchanging origin amidst the changes, which is the so-called historical tradition.The longer the tradition, the greater the reliability of this great source.In other words, its vitality is getting stronger.As far as China's past political theory is concerned, it must be bad if the power of prime minister is given to the emperor, and it must be bad if there is no objective standard for employing people.The Jiupin Zhongzheng system was originally intended to set an objective standard for the employers at that time, without losing the traditional spirit of this system.But later, it became a support for family status, and the criteria for finding talents were virtually limited to the small range of family status, which was a big mistake.In the Tang Dynasty, in response to this disadvantage, it was changed to free elections. The so-called "self-examination of the concubine", that is, there is no need for the local governor to check the case, let alone the central government's nine-rank Zhongzheng evaluation. Sign up and take the central examination.Generally speaking, this system is more progressive than before.The Han system stipulates that merchants cannot be officials, and officials cannot engage in business. Township elections and elections are reported by the local government.Now the only restriction on free application is that applicants must not be businessmen or workers.Because businessmen are only for private profit.Those who are seeking for the exam now must concentrate on serving the public.This limitation of this registration was called innocent at that time, and naturally it also included not having violated the laws of the country.In addition, the local officials no longer imposed restrictions, that is, the application was sent to the central government, and the Ministry of Rites and Ministers held an examination.If you pass the exam, you will be a Jinshi.Jinshi Jidi is qualified to be an official.As for the actual distribution and appointment, it is necessary to pass the re-examination by the Ministry of Officials. The examination is more important than the person's appearance and oral examination, as well as administrative documents.Mostly, the Ministry of Rites examines talent and learning, while the Ministry of Officials examines competence.And because there are Jinshi and Mingjing subjects in the Ministry of Officials Examination, so this system is also called the imperial examination system.From the Tang Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the implementation of this system has not stopped.That is, in Mr. Sun Yat-sen's five-power constitution, there is also a special examination right.This system, in theory, must not be criticized, but later it was still full of problems.However, we cannot wipe out the system simply because something is wrong.It is said that the government employs people, so why not vote in a democratic way.In fact, voting in modern Western elections is not without problems.Moreover, it is most unrealistic for us to use the current prevailing system as a basis for criticizing the old system more than a thousand years ago.In the current so-called democratic politics in the West, only the executive leaders, such as the president or the prime minister, are elected by the people, and there are no standards for all other appointments.Is there anything wrong with this?Therefore, in addition to electing political leaders, the West has to consider adopting China's examination system to establish their so-called civil service appointment method.In our case, examinations replace elections.Therefore, Du You in the Tang Dynasty wrote "Tong Dian", first discussing food and goods (that is, finance and economy), which is election.In fact, in the Han Dynasty, it was an election, and in the Tang Dynasty, it was an examination.It can be seen that in the Chinese political tradition, examinations and elections have the same purpose and function.The current democratic politics in the West is a kind of party politics. The political officials are generally selected from the same party, and the affairs officers are not divided into parties, and they are also tested.Officials in this category may not lose their guarantee of service due to the replacement of administrative officials.In China, all employment is based on examinations and civil evaluations, and there are certain objective standards.Ascending to the throne as high as a prime minister also has certain qualifications and restrictions. The emperor cannot just use someone as a prime minister.If so, it will become more important to the law than to the person, and the emperor can only choose according to the unwritten law at that time.Do not go beyond this kind of customary law, so it is not necessary to consult the opinions of the public again and again.That's not to say it's completely useless.It is even more unreasonable to say that the Chinese imperial examination system is a policy of ignoring the people, caused by the private intentions of one or two emperors.It should be known that the establishment of any kind of system can only be realized by the private wishes of one or two people, so there is no system to speak of.If it is said that the emperor deceived the people, and with this deception, he was able to rule for hundreds of years, which is absolutely unreasonable in ancient and modern China and abroad.If people are so gullible, there is no reason to advocate democracy.Speaking from the facts, the imperial examination system is obviously opening up the political power, and this is the inner meaning and spiritual life of the imperial examination system.Elections in the Han Dynasty were a way to open political power among the feudal aristocracy.Open elections in the Tang Dynasty were a way to open political power among special classes of family status.The scope of openness in the Tang Dynasty was wider and more free than those in the Han Dynasty.So from this point of view, we can say that the politics of the Tang Dynasty made progress again.At that time, people from poor families and poor children often borrowed Buddhist monasteries and Taoist schools to study in order to take the exam.For example, Wang Bo was one of the people who borrowed from the monk's temple and later became a prime minister. The story of Zhong Zhong after dinner is still a good story.However, the imperial examination system in the Tang Dynasty had problems.To put it bluntly, although there were quotas for the imperial examinations at that time, there were indeed no restrictions on enrolling in the examinations.Therefore, due to the unlimited increase of applicants, the admission quota has to be gradually relaxed.However, intellectuals across the country ended up seeking more official positions than those who won them. The government was unable to install them, and had to expand the scope of the government's organization.Three hundred years before and after the Tang Dynasty, due to the liberalization of the government, more and more people took the exam, so the government set up officials outside the ranks, and there were alternate officials. Officials lack salary and officials harass others. This is a big abuse in the opening of the regime.This malpractice still exists to this day.It should be known that the so-called democratic revolution in the modern West originated from the fact that the regime was not open.China, on the other hand, has committed the poison of open regime since the Tang Dynasty.Putting out water with water and putting out fire with fire is not only the wrong medicine, but also aggravating the disease.If we want to solve the long-standing evils of Chinese society, we should stop intellectuals from concentrating on politics, and reward industry and commerce so that their talents will turn to this path.However, the result can easily turn into capitalism.In the West, there is a middle-class society first, and there are emerging industrial and commercial capitals first, and then they come to open up official careers and predict politics.This is not the case in China. It can be said that since the Han Dynasty, the political power has been opened to all parts of the country, and intellectuals have been continuously rewarded for joining official careers, while at the same time suppressing industrial and commercial capital.It only encourages people to become great scholars and high officials, but it does not reward people to become great businessmen and make a fortune.Controlling capital and equalizing land rights are generally traditional policies in Chinese history.Political measures are intended to guide the wisdom and wisdom of the people and not allow them to plan unlimited development for private financial resources.As a result, intellectuals competed to become officials on the political stage, and official careers were flooded, resulting in political bloat.Scholars become political fat.If they are rewarded to come to revolution and fight for power, then what's the point?It can be seen that any system has advantages and disadvantages. It is not that our traditional political knowledge is authoritarian, dark, irrational, and lawless, but that all rational and lawful systems should be continuously improved and grown.